


Bad Ideas

by thenspokethethunder



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Green Gables Fables
Genre: Denial, Drama Drama Drama, F/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension, emotional cheating (sort of?), lots of rain and sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 20:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6254917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenspokethethunder/pseuds/thenspokethethunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You can't make me your stand-in boyfriend when you and Roy are fighting.” </p>
<p>Anne's mouth dropped open. She flung herself away from him as if he were suddenly made of lava. “I was <i>not</i> doing that."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Ideas

**Author's Note:**

> Oh man. I'm sorry about this. This is.... this is a lot of things. Just.... gratuitous angst/denial/emotional confusion/moody weather. It's meant to take place right after 2.26 (Not Alright) was uploaded.

Gilbert was getting the hang of this Being-Friends-With-Anne-With-A-Boyfriend thing. It had taken a while, of course. At first, hearing the gossip about them around campus had felt a little bit like giant fishing hooks were being plunged into his rib cage, but after a while, he got used to seeing them together. 

Or maybe it just got easier to ignore. 

Then he and Anne started talking again and it was suddenly impossible to ignore. While Anne seemed overtly careful about keeping Roy out of their time together and he had seen her ignore calls and let the occasional text go unanswered, he never let himself forget that she had a boyfriend and he was just the... close male friend with whom she took long, rambling walks and talked for hours about Life, the Universe and Everything. Yikes. That was worse than being the chump in love with his best friend. 

Okay. Maybe he wasn't handling it as well as he had hoped. But he couldn't push her away now. Not when they were both so raw from missing Ruby. And, he thought, maybe even missing each other. He hadn't dared to hope that Anne had missed their friendship as much as he had, but the hours of talking, the sudden resurgence of the late night text conversations - it reminded him of when they had first become friends and every day felt like they were making up for lost time. 

He was not in love with her anymore. He kept telling himself that over and over, like a mantra. He was not in love with her and they just needed each other right now because of Ruby. He shouldn't get used to it. Having Anne in his life again was so, so good, but it was fragile, and he couldn't let himself ruin it again. 

****** 

Anne went to bed fuming. She and Roy only fought for another twenty minutes or so after she turned off her camera. The whole thing had ended with him stalking out of her room as he said “Goodnight, Anne” in a clipped voice. She had paced angrily around her dorm, continuing the argument in her head and making lists of everything she would say to him the next day.  
She pretended to be asleep when Phil came in. She wanted to rant, but Phil was Roy's best friend... and she came from the same world of old money and impressive families. Anne didn't think she would understand. 

She woke up the next morning and she was still angry. When she watched the footage from the night before, her anger turned from hot and burning to ice cold. The things he said about her sharing all her secrets with thousands of strangers particularly rankled. She knew she shouldn't... she knew she would regret it once she cooled down, but she uploaded the video anyway, glaring at the screen.

“ _How's that for drama, Mr. Gardner_?” she thought bitterly. 

After the video was posted, she felt immediately deflated. She should call him and say she was sorry. Shouldn't she? This was not a time to let her stupid pride get in the way.

But... Roy could apologize too. He could apologize first. 

She picked up her phone. 

******* 

Gilbert didn't feel anything particular when he saw Anne's name appear on the screen of his phone. Just the normal happy feelings any person would feel upon receiving a message from a good friend. 

_**Are you free to hang out**_?

Gilbert texted back, **_Sorry, I'm about to meet some people to study. I can do later today if you want?_**

She replied immediately: _**Ughhhhh. Ok.**_

He paused, frowning over this message. **_Everything okay?_**

**_Not really. I'm just having a bad day I guess._ **

He glanced at the textbooks strewn across his bed. The voice of reason in his head told him he really couldn't keep dropping everything he was doing to run to Anne's side and cheer her up. Or at least, he shouldn't. _Bad idea, Blythe. You might as well draw a bullseye over your heart and say “Here. Aim here.”_ But not, because he didn't feel that way about her anymore. 

_**I can reschedule and meet you in 20. Sound good?** _

******* 

It was raining when they met up, but Anne wanted to be outside. She didn't want to run the risk of meeting Roy in a hallway or cafeteria. She found a dry spot on a bench beside a covered walkway that faced a small garden. It was a place she and Gilbert, and occasionally Diana, had come to study and talk a few times when school had first started. The flowers had been in bloom then, but none of them were now. It seemed oddly symbolic, she reflected as she gazed morosely at the sodden leaves and remembered that only a few weeks ago, she had been floating above the world in a dreamy haze, utterly enchanted with every word that came out of Roy's mouth. 

She had never claimed any comparison to Romeo and Juliet, but Roy did quote the balcony scene on their very first date. It was when they were leaving the restaurant, and he opened the door for her. As she turned to smile her thanks, he looked right into her eyes and murmured, “O', she doth teach the torches to burn bright!” 

Anne had melted. 

_Gilbert could quote Shakespeare too_ , she remembered. But Gilbert usually went for the pithy witticisms, or the puns and outlandish insults. Gilbert was much more likely to call her a swaggering rascal or a cream-faced loon than he was to liken her to Juliet.

Not that she was comparing Roy and Gilbert. 

_You are the droplets sliding down a window pane..._ She shut her eyes tightly as the poem he had written her played in her head over the sound of the rain. Why was it so hard to bring back the way she had felt when she first heard those lines? 

“Hey, what's going on?” Her eyes flew open when she heard Gilbert's voice, as he sat down on the bench beside her, looking damp. Like her, he seemed to have forgotten an umbrella.

“Roy and I had a fight.” 

****** 

Gilbert was not sure what to say for a few seconds. 

“Oh,” he said stupidly. “Are you... okay?”

“No. I mean, yes. It probably isn't a big deal,” she said quickly. It's just that it's our first real fight. Our first fight ever, I guess. I don't have any kind of experience with this. I don't know if I should apologize first – or if I should let him. Or maybe we should just...” She trailed off. “I don't feel like I was in the wrong.” 

Gilbert shifted uncomfortably. “Oh,” he said again. So they were just fighting, not broken up. And this conversation was on a path that led to no good. 

But before he could come up with a way to change the subject, Anne was diving into the details of the fight – the surprise meeting with his family, and the disastrous dinner, all the while Gilbert's sense of discomfort grew. He was always wary when female friends complained about their relationships to him, since he was never sure when to offer up advice and when to just stay quiet. 

And to have a conversation like this with Anne of all people... Gilbert would willingly have talked to her about anything else. They could sit around discussing nail polish colors and he would be content, but this was just... awful. _It's fine_ , he kept telling himself. _You're not in love with her anymore, so this is fine._ She was in the middle of outlining all of the turns the fight had taken when Gilbert interrupted.

“Wait – you were filming all of this?” 

“No... not all of it. I turned the camera off after he-” 

“Anne, _why_ would you have the camera on in the first place? I thought your videos were all about making memories, not putting people on the spot so they suddenly have to explain their actions to all your viewers. That feels kind of manipulative.”

Anne's cheeks turned red. “I agree that it wasn't my best idea,” she huffed. “But I would never have tried to film it if I thought we were going to fight like that! I wasn't trying to pick a fight. But he was so condescending and – and – belittling. You know what he told me right before he left? He told me he thought I was more _mature_ than other freshman girls and that he must have been wrong.” 

Gilbert frowned. “He shouldn't talk to you like that.” Anne was caught off guard, and when she looked at him Gilbert could see the vulnerability she usually hid so well. Sometimes Gilbert forgot that most of her life before she had come to Avonlea had been spent with people who at best, put her in a corner and treated her like a child, and at worst were unkind and told her to stop talking so much. “Anne, you don't deserve to be -” 

“I know,” she said, cutting him off and shrugging. “But I probably shouldn't have said those things about his family. I called them mean.” She groaned. “I can't believe I uploaded that video. Ugh, I'm just as tacky as his mother and sister thought I was!”

“Tacky is the last word on earth any person who has ever met you would use to describe you. But yeah, uploading the video might not have been the best call.”

“I was so angry. I felt like it was what he expected me to do, you know?” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you ever feel like... if someone wants you to do something or tells you to do something, you want to do exactly the opposite, even if you know they're right?” She sighed. “I guess I'm not as mature as _I_ thought I was either.” 

“Well,” Gilbert said, “If you ask me, Roy got off pretty easy.” Anne gave him a questioning look. “I mean, your days of breaking things over peoples' heads are over, so he should consider himself lucky.” He smiled and bumped her arm with his. 

She bumped back. “Hey! I still have that locker board somewhere. So if you don't watch out, I could still do some more damage with it.” 

“You kept it? Shirley, I'm touched.” 

“I did not _keep_ it. I just never threw it away so it's still lying around somewhere.” She gathered up her damp hair and absently combed it over one shoulder. Gilbert thought it made her look like a mermaid. He stole a glance at her out of the corner of his eye, and then, for just a moment he forgot about everything he had been training himself to think and do when he was around Anne, and he allowed himself to just... look.

_Oh no. Bad idea._

It didn't take long for her to notice he was staring. “What? What is it?” she asked. 

Gilbert's heart started racing. _Huh, that's weird,_ he thought. _No reason for it to be doing that._ He ripped his eyes away. _Still not in love with her. Everything is fine._ “Did you know that the rain on Venus is actually acid?” he blurted frantically. 

“I didn't,” Anne said, raising her eyebrows. “I've missed your science facts. Why don't you do those anymore?” 

“Just too busy with homework to research unrelated subjects for strange and useless facts, I guess.” 

A gust of wind blew a sheet of rain onto the bench, hitting them both in the back of the neck. Anne shivered and rubbed her arms. Gilbert hurried to unzip the sweatshirt he was wearing and drape it over her, with a sense of resignation to the fact that this was something he couldn't _not_ do. 

“Do you want to go inside?”

“No,” she said. “I'm fine. This is fine.” She slipped her arms into the sleeves of his sweatshirt and zipped it up. Gilbert couldn't have explained the pang this gave him if he wanted to. 

“Anne, you look really cold. And wet. I think you should go inside. I don't want you getting sick with exams just around the -” 

“Gilbert, I'm fine,” she protested. Her expression changed to one of forced brightness. “Come on, let's do something today. Let's go somewhere off campus! We can get coffee and complain about our classes. It'll be fun!” That did sound fun, but again Gilbert experienced the awful sinking-stomach feeling. 

“I don't think that's a good idea. I really need to study-” 

“Okay!” Her cheerfulness was almost aggressive. “We can study, then. Just – please – don't go.” She took his arm. “I don't want to be by myself.” Anne looked imploringly at him, and her head dropped down to lean on his shoulder, her arm linking around his. 

_This is... fine. Everything is fine._ His stomach sank even farther. 

He couldn't do this. 

“Anne,” he said, a little sharper than he meant to.

“Hmm?” she replied. He felt her breath on his collarbone.

“Anne,” he said again, more softly. “You can't... do this.”

“Do what?” She lifted her head slightly and looked at him. He knew she wasn't doing it on purpose – no one could be so cruel – but her face was so close to his and that thing Ruby asked him such a long time ago drifted into his head. _How do you feel about girls with freckles?_

“You can't make me your stand-in boyfriend when you and Roy are fighting.” 

Anne's mouth dropped open. She flung herself away from him as if he were suddenly made of lava. “I was _not_ doing that,” she said, the furious flare once again in her eyes.

“I get that you probably don't realize you're doing it, and that you need-” 

“I need a _friend_ , Gilbert,” she said. “I thought that's what you were being. Or is that not good enough for you?”

There it was, hard as a slap. He suspected she had been thinking something like that for some time. It had come too quickly, too easily, for her to just think of it in the moment. “Anne, of course I'm your friend. I want to be there for you, whatever you need. But there are some things that I...” He suddenly felt a wave of dizziness come over him. That had been happening a lot lately. Maybe he should go home and lie down. He blinked, trying to clear his vision and stay upright. “Look, why don't you call Diana or something?” 

“Because!” Anne said, her eyes blazing as they always did when she got worked up. “Her relationship with Fred is _perfect_. They never fight, and they were made for each other and they know they want to be together forever. She's been against Roy from the beginning-” 

“I don't think she's _against _Roy. Diana wants you to be happy.”__

__“Everyone keep saying they want me to be happy. Why can't she – or anyone else – see that Roy makes me happy?” She was almost yelling now and try as he might, he couldn't stop his own voice from rising to match hers._ _

“ _It doesn't seem like he's making you happy right now_ ,” he shouted. She fell silent, glaring at him. He couldn't look at her eyes anymore. He shouldn't even be having this conversation in the first place. “It seems like he's making you miserable,” he said, lowering his voice, though it still sounded too loud and angry in his own ears. 

__“Well, he's not. It's just a fight,” she said, her voice taut._ _

__“Then why are you here, instead of working it out with him?” She was so angry she couldn't even answer him, and Gilbert thought she was going to storm off in a huff._ _

__But she stayed._ _

__Anne stared ahead, her arms crossed, her back rigid, while Gilbert stared at his own hands. Neither of them said anything for a long time, but they both stayed, listening to the rain. Gradually, Anne's shoulders began to relax._ _

__“I'm sorry,” Gilbert said. "Please don't think that I don't want to be your friend. I really, really do. I just don't think I'm the right person to talk to about this.”_ _

__She sniffed, and Gilbert looked over and realized with horror that she had started crying. He hadn't meant to make her cry. “I'm sorry too. Your plans today,” she said, mopping her eyes. “Were they with Christine? When I asked if you could see me?”_ _

__He hesitated. “Yes.”_ _

__“Ugh,” she said, pulling her hands inside the sleeves of Gilbert's sweatshirt. “You're right, this was a bad idea. You should go and find Christine.”_ _

__The rain was falling harder than ever. He knew, objectively, that Anne could not control the weather with her moods. Not literally. But her eyes always started a storm inside him, and he wanted to make the sun shine for her._ _

__As he fought his desire to stay, Anne's phone buzzed, making up his mind for him. She fished the phone out from her pocket and Gilbert only needed to see the way she tensed up again to know that it was from Roy._ _

__“Okay.” He stood up, and held out a hand to help her up from the bench. She accepted it, and he dropped her hand as soon as she was standing. He took a deep breath before saying: “And - you should go work things out with Roy.”_ _

__“Yeah,” she said, looking down at her phone. “I guess I should.” She smiled a little. “Have fun with Christine!”_ _

__It wasn't until he was hit with a blast of freezing wind and rain on the walk back to his dorm that he remembered he had left his sweatshirt with Anne. He wondered with dread and a small amount of satisfaction what Roy would make of that._ _

_This is bad. This is very bad._

**Author's Note:**

> Sincerest apologies if this reads as really sloppy and rambly. I tried to put in too much and even though I cut out a lot of things, it still doesn't feel like it all belongs together in one story. Also, if the writers are going to relentlessly and mercilessly foreshadow a certain upcoming illness, I will do the same.


End file.
